Can't shoot the messenger: When the bearer of bad news is a machine

There is an old joke about the invention of a fully automated airplane and how these are the last words the passengers hear before it nosedives. But being addressed by a computerized voice is never a good sign. The passengers on that particular aircraft should probably have been tipped off earlier when they were instructed to "fasten their seat belts" to their carry-on luggage.

It was going to be a bumpy ride.

In my own case the scariest three words in the English language are "Attention, South Orange." This is how a computer voice leads into the announcement that my train to work has been delayed for the foreseeable future. Whenever I hear these words, I know we are going down.

The designers and engineers behind these machine voices must think they are reassuring us. Wouldn't passengers, so the logic goes, prefer to hear bad news from a voice so detached and omniscient-sounding as to seem God-like? Better that than to listen to some human stumble around in awkward embarrassment.

"Um, gee, folks, I wanted to mention we're experiencing technical difficulties and apologize for any inconvenience -- aagh! We just lost the control panel!"

Recently, I have been passing the time waiting for late trains by imagining how passengers on the Titanic would have reacted to hearing news of the iceberg from the computer voice used by New Jersey Transit.

"Attention transatlantic passengers!"

Guided by past experience, these passengers would have immediately started to grumble to one another their best guesses as to how long the delay would be this time.